Category: Unearthed

We’re back with a seasonally appropriate Unearthed mix of dusty live tapes, this one made up entirely of recordings made on various New Years Eves throughout the 1970s. As with any good NYE party, it’s equal parts awesome, boozy and occasionally chaotic. Hit play at 10:30pm on December 31 and you can time it just right to hear JJ Cale welcome you to 1976.

It’s been a few years, but we’re rebooting the Unearthed mix series in 2025 — further trips into the murky bootleg world! To get things going, a mix made up entirely of live recordings from various Valentines Days from over the decades. It’d certainly be a stretch to call everything included here a love song, but hey, we’re all mature enough to recognize that the emotions of February 14 run the gamut, right? The moony, swoony vibes of the holiday can just as easily slip into feelings of loneliness, regret and heartbreak. Or just plain weirdness! All aboard the mystery train of love …

A kind of prequel to a previous 90s-centric Unearthed mix, 1992 Blend takes us on a kaleidoscopic trip through what they used to call “Alternative Rock” (Or College Rock? Or Indie Rock?) via a selection of dusty-but-dynamic live tapes. This stuff may be 30 years old now, but in many ways, these sounds represent a gold standard for guitar-forward rock music, finding inspiration in the past, but with eyes still fixed on the horizon. Nevermind the Buzz Bin — dig into this.

Time for another journey through the past! The latest volume of our ongoing Unearthed bootleg mix series features just about 71 minutes of live jams from 1971: krautrock, folk rock, hard rock, jazz rock, etc. Fifty years later, these sounds remain vital, even through that lo-fi tape hiss. Don’t delay — get blended.

Did indie rock peak in 1995? It feels like it did — but it’s possible that I think that because I was an impressionable 16-year-old then, having my mind blown week after week by the underground’s leading lights. Whatever, we can all agree that the indie scene was thriving 25 years ago, and the latest Unearthed bootleg mix gathers together some tasty live ’95 jams for your listening pleasure. Most of the big names are here, along with a few slightly underappreciated artists. Turn back the clock and take a dip in the Diamond Sea.

McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica isn’t just one of the best musical instrument stores in the great Los Angeles area. For a half-century, its backroom has been the site of thousands of concerts. It’s an incredibly intimate space, encouraging artists to loosen up and really connect with fans. For the latest Unearthed bootleg mix extravaganza, we’ve got 85 minutes of cherrypicked McCabe’s performances, stretching from 1972 to 2017, featuring mellow folkies, punk rockers, jangle guitar gods and more.

If you were out on Long Island from the mid-70s to the mid-80s, your best bet for adventurous and eclectic live music was My Father’s Place. The Roslyn, NY club hosted an array of genre-leading talents: prog monsters, folk rock legends, reggae icons, jazz fusioneers, punk pioneers and beyond. Lucky for us, many of these shows were broadcast over the WLIR-FM airwaves — and drawing from that deep archive, the latest Unearthed bootleg mix extravaganza cherrypicks some choice My Father’s Place performances from the club’s heyday. Download and get lost in the Long Island Sound.

Our semi-regular bootleg mix series returns in 2020 with another selection of murky and magical sounds: Fillmore West-ready boogies, mystical mantras, bloozy workouts and deeply stoned jams, plenty of Dead-adjacent action.